Some racket

Oh I get it – some of them were never actually priests at all – they were guys who wanted to fuck children and figured out that being ‘a priest’ was a terrific dodge for doing just that – it shunted a big supply of trusting obedient children straight into your hands, and it made it very likely that you would be able to dodge prosecution, punishment, discovery, and even being fired. What a beautiful set-up! Tailor made!

Fr William Carney, a “crude and loutish” priest who “used bad language” and was then aged 29, had lunch with Michael Woods, the then health minister, in 1980. For three years Carney had been making inquiries about his chances of fostering children…Two years later Carney requested permission to foster a particular boy from an institution at the commencement of Ten Plus, a programme designed to encourage the fostering of children aged over 10. This boy subsequently alleged that Carney abused him. After his ordination as a priest of the Dublin diocese in 1974, Carney regularly sexually abused boys and girls. The Dublin Commission records complaints or suspicions about him relating to 32 named individuals and says there is evidence he preyed on many more.

Terrific, isn’t it? Carney was ‘ordained’ at age 23, and got right down to work. All went so swimmingly that six years later he was trying to foster children – with the encouragement of his bishop, who had ‘a soft spot’ for him.

And the bishop who had ‘a soft spot’ for Carney, was also a close buddy of Cardinal Connell, who once gave a sneering grin to the media camera, when he was confronted about clerical sexual abuse issues. The latter did not want to be bothered with the media asking him questions about such matters – as there were, in his estimation, far more important things to be discussed.

This learned man also made life very difficult for the commission to inquire into institutional child abuse, by delaying handing over to it -important documentation. He had the audacity to threaten the law to concerned persons. Thankfully, he was the eventual loser. He thought he was power incarnate ,and that being an important prince of the church, he could wave his crosier about with impunity.

Thanks, OB, for highlighting clerical sexual abuse of children. I wish there were more people of your ilk, out there in the blogosphere, kicking up hell about this atrocious issue.

Dr Dónal Murray, Bishop of Limerick, who was criticised in the report , said his resignation is a question of whether it “is a help or a hindrance to the diocese of Limerick.” Dr Murray told the congregation at mass today that he would “be guided by the priests and people of the diocese.”

This is what I would call typical reverse psychology at play. As I said before, the religious are masters of spin. It knows only to well that its rural indoctrinated, mostly elderly flock, which Sigmund referred to in last post on subject and its own clerical members will gather in all out forces to protect them to the last.

They will have no choice, as the rural community would think it unbearable having to dismiss a figure, whose ringed finger, they have so oftentimes kissed. They would not like to be thought of as Judas-like figures. The priests too who would go along with the dismissal would be shunned by their own if they were to point the finger at Dr. Murray.

OB, Vincent Browne (sunday business post.ie) had this, and even more on the issue of child clerical sex abuse, with respect of Kavanagh’s buddy.

It concerns ‘Mental Reservation’.

“Desmond Connell, an archbishop, a professor of philosophy, later a cardinal of the Church, a finger-wagging moralist; the man who spoke of his counterpart in the Church of Ireland as being intellectually inferior; the man who had a moral qualm about attending a reception hosted by Bertie Ahern and his then partner, Celia Larkin; the man who, as head of the philosophy department at UCD for years, was the Church’s man in a key post. Connell, the moralist, told the investigation commission that it was okay to lie, provided that one had a ‘‘mental reservation’’.

All right, he may not have said outright that it was okay to lie, but he did say it was okay to convey an untruth and do so deliberately.”

The rest of the article is indeed worth reading. Vincent Browne, like Mary Raftery, has always got a right handle on things.

So too with the Ryan Report, there are people out there – who just do not want to know anything about institutional or clerical abuse of children. They would much rather think about nice things coming up to Jesus.